The Speech Intimidation Game The left plays rough to shut down conservative ideas—as Visa and Coke learned the hard way. Kimberley Strassel
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-speech-intimidation-game-1466374572
To this day, Lisa Nelson refers to it as the “corporate blackmail” letter. It arrived in the early spring of 2012 at her Visa office in Washington, D.C. Ms. Nelson at the time was in the government-relations department for the credit-card company and had seen her share of bare-knuckle political activism. But this letter was bigger, meaner, scarier.
The letter was officially addressed to Visa CEO Joseph Saunders and every member of Visa’s board; Ms. Nelson had been cc’ed. It came from a black advocacy group known as Color of Change, co-founded by liberal activist Rashad Robinson and by onetime Obama adviser Van Jones.
The month before, a 17-year-old African-American in Sanford, Fla., Trayvon Martin, had been fatally shot by a neighborhood-watch volunteer named George Zimmerman. The circumstances of the altercation proved confusing, but the black community instantly became angry over the police’s decision not to arrest Mr. Zimmerman. Florida has a “stand your ground” law, which authorizes a person to protect against a perceived threat. Within a few weeks, Color of Change was blaming this law on a center-right organization known as the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Visa was among a number of companies that gave money to ALEC, in support of its efforts to foster a pro-business environment in state legislatures. Color of Change’s letter was direct: Visa’s board must immediately pull all money from ALEC. If it did not, the advocacy group would air radio ads in the hometowns of Visa board members, holding them accountable for the death of a young black man.
The Visa board members weren’t alone. More than a few Fortune 500 companies had made the mistake of revealing, at an event here or there, that they donated to ALEC. The threatening letters flew out to board members at McDonald’s, John Deere, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Amazon, Wendy’s, Procter & Gamble.
Ms. Nelson, whom ALEC hired as its CEO in 2014, recalls thinking that “I needed to keep making the case that, as a company, we could not be put in a position where we could be told who we could work with.” Her boss agreed. Visa kept on with its ALEC donations. At least for a time. CONTINUE AT SITE
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